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Blue Springs freshman Ashley Sturman sees her dad as two completely different people.
First, there’s just Dad. That guy always offering love and support.
But at the pool, where Ashley has established herself as one of the Wildcats’ most consistent performers, Dad is never around even though he’s one of Ashley’s co-coaches. There, Ashley refers to her father – Rob Sturman – as “Sturman.” Just like everyone else on the team. And Rob looks at his only daughter just like he does every other team member: an important part of the unit, for sure, but not any more special than anyone else.
“I don’t call him Dad at practice,” Ashley said. “Because there, I look at him as Coach, and he explains what I need to work on with my technique and this and that. As Dad, he’ll be like, ‘You looked really good out there. Your turns looked good.’ Even though they probably didn’t.”
The arrangement is similar for Julie Shalley, a Blue Springs senior and daughter of the Wildcats’ other co-coach, Bill Shalley.
So if you’re counting, that’s one swimming team, two coaches and two coaches’ daughters.
This is all familiar for Bill, who coached both of his sons – Jesse and John, who graduated in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Although, he admits, there’s a bit of a difference when it comes to coaching a girl as opposed to boys.
Julie’s mother, Mary Shalley, can attest to that. Mary says the boys were of the same hyper-competitive mold as their father. Julie takes after Mom – a bit calmer – even though she still has an obvious passion for the team and sport.
Even with the difference in personalities, Bill’s coaching strategy remains the same. It’s the method coaching mentors like longtime Kansas City Blazers coach Pete Malone encouraged him to adopt years ago as Shalley’s boys were growing up.
There’s a time and a place for swimming. At the pool.
“I had kids late in life, so when I finally had kids I had a real strong detailed concept of how I wanted to handle that,” Shalley said. “I wanted to be Coach on deck, and then once we stepped off it was Dad. We didn’t cross those boundaries.”
Over the years he’s had discussions with Rob about taking the same approach with Ashley. Neither family has a set of unbreakable ground rules, per say, but there’s a mutual understanding of when swimming talk is and isn’t allowed.
Blue Springs freshman Ashley Sturman sees her dad as two completely different people.
First, there’s just Dad. That guy always offering love and support.
But at the pool, where Ashley has established herself as one of the Wildcats’ most consistent performers, Dad is never around even though he’s one of Ashley’s co-coaches. There, Ashley refers to her father – Rob Sturman – as “Sturman.” Just like everyone else on the team. And Rob looks at his only daughter just like he does every other team member: an important part of the unit, for sure, but not any more special than anyone else.
“I don’t call him Dad at practice,” Ashley said. “Because there, I look at him as Coach, and he explains what I need to work on with my technique and this and that. As Dad, he’ll be like, ‘You looked really good out there. Your turns looked good.’ Even though they probably didn’t.”
The arrangement is similar for Julie Shalley, a Blue Springs senior and daughter of the Wildcats’ other co-coach, Bill Shalley.
So if you’re counting, that’s one swimming team, two coaches and two coaches’ daughters.
This is all familiar for Bill, who coached both of his sons – Jesse and John, who graduated in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Although, he admits, there’s a bit of a difference when it comes to coaching a girl as opposed to boys.
Julie’s mother, Mary Shalley, can attest to that. Mary says the boys were of the same hyper-competitive mold as their father. Julie takes after Mom – a bit calmer – even though she still has an obvious passion for the team and sport.
Even with the difference in personalities, Bill’s coaching strategy remains the same. It’s the method coaching mentors like longtime Kansas City Blazers coach Pete Malone encouraged him to adopt years ago as Shalley’s boys were growing up.
There’s a time and a place for swimming. At the pool.
“I had kids late in life, so when I finally had kids I had a real strong detailed concept of how I wanted to handle that,” Shalley said. “I wanted to be Coach on deck, and then once we stepped off it was Dad. We didn’t cross those boundaries.”
Over the years he’s had discussions with Rob about taking the same approach with Ashley. Neither family has a set of unbreakable ground rules, per say, but there’s a mutual understanding of when swimming talk is and isn’t allowed.
For Rob and Ashley, that’s at the pool and some on the drive home. For the Shalleys, an occasional swimming pep talk might be allowed at dinner every now and then, but only under the rarest of circumstances.
In both cases, it’s understood beforehand that the conversation is to be brief and to the point.
“It’s like, ‘OK, we’re going to talk swimming, we’re going to talk for this amount of time and then we’re done,’” said Julie Sturman, Rob’s wife and Ashley’s mother. “But typically at home, that’s home time.”
Bill says it’s fairly easy for him to find that balance, partly because one of his biggest pet peeves is overbearing parents.
“Only an idiot comes home and hammers their kid at the supper table,” he said.
Both coaches admit it’s a constant challenge. There’s always the worry they’ll be perceived as playing favorites. Ashley can remember a conversation she had with her dad in junior high in the family’s basement – or Rob’s “man cave,” as it’s more commonly called – when he warned her what the next four years would be like.
“He sat me down there and said, ‘You’re going to be looked at coming in, and you’re going to have to do your best,’” she said. “There will be times where I’m going to have to be mean and I will call you out and you’re going to learn. But I still love you, because I’m your dad.’”
It’s been helpful for Ashley to have a teammate who knows exactly what she’s going through. And she and Julie go way back. The two grew up going to state swim meets together when John and Jesse were in school.
“She’s like a sister to me,” Ashley said.
Bill and Rob have a similar relationship. The two have had countless talks over the years about the best way to handle the coach’s kid dynamic. And with a co-coach system, there’s always the option to trade off coaching duties if they think the father-daughter relationship could cause an issue.
“That’s been the beautiful part,” Rob said, “because we worked with him and Jesse and then John and now Julie. The thing we do is if we’re having a hard time, he would send me to them. And I would talk to them and get them through what they needed to get through.”
There’s certainly challenges and even a few awkward moments that come with swimming on Dad’s team. But there was rarely any doubt that this was how it would be. Ashley said she’s wanted to swim for her father since she was sitting in the stands watching him coach Julie’s older brothers.
Neither has ever known anything different.
“It’s been kind of a good way for us to connect over something in a way that most kids and parents don’t have,” Julie Shalley said. “But I’m just so used to it because it’s always kind of been that way that I can’t really tell the difference. When people ask, ‘Oh, is it weird swimming for your dad?’ I don’t know. I’ve never really done anything different. But I do like it.”
